How much skill does warrior really take?

I'm trying to decide what class to play right now and I'd like some advice. I'd really like to play a warrior (right now I'm leveling a paladin). Their playstyle seems like it'd be much more fun & I'm more into the "blood & guts" rather than the whole "holy light" thing.

The problem is, I hear a lot of people talk about how much skill is required to play a warrior. I honestly don't have hours to practice playing a character everyday. I'd like to log in and have some fun and log out. So, I'm wondering: how much skill does warrior really take?

Once you get it, its like riding a bike, you don't forget. It'll take a while to learn how to stance dance, but when you get good at it, Its very, very rewarding with the amount of blood that will be shed.

What worries me is the videos I've seen online. People like Swifty talk about stuff that's just mind-boggling for me, right now. I remember my friend showing me a video where he was doing something like stance dancing to do some rage, then charging, or something. It was seriously like a 7 button thing just to get higher Shield Slam damage in PvP.

It seems daunting! I have a lot of respect for you guys who've mastered this stuff. :)

Yeah, If your wanting an easy fun to play class.... I would have said hunter before 4.0 cause they were stupid easy to play/lvl. Right now I'm not sure on what would be the easy class to play/lvl now.

As for warriors:
Fury is lol, for the most part you only really hit 2 buttons like others have said.
Arms is fun for me, I enjoy having to focus on more attacks/buttons and setting up macros.
Prot is annoying at times as of right now.

Yes we are gear dependent, but you don't need to be in the best gear to have fun. But this is all my opinion of the class.

Well, I'm not specifically talking about PvP, but I guess it's implied. I mean, no offense, but I think a dps rotation would be pretty easy to figure out with all the info online nowadays. I plan to be fury for everything.

I guess implied, though, I'm talking about PvP. I've seen so many videos showing the masters at work and it's overwhelming. But then, they have years of experience in their class and I'm just learning.

I think I'm gonna go with warrior. I mean, the playstyle seems more fun and that's what it's about, IMO. I might suck at PvP, but at least it'll be fun in PvE.

Warriors have the steepest learning curve, are the most gear dependent and require a healer. Then you need a fast computer with the best internet connection for the lowest possible latency for spell reflect/stun jumping. You will need about 15 macros, key bindings, special mouse....just to be competitive. Then once you master it, they will nerf you again and other toons who have a warrior but roll another class will jump on the QQ threads and tell you to adapt. Rinse and repeat...with hundreds of hours just trying to be competive.

Stop posting ^

To the OP, this is a video game, everything is easy to learn. Just read about your class, but don't take information from bigdownlow. It's like writing a bad check then setting it on fire, then setting your office building on fire.

At 85 there's a lot more focus on lining up as much damage as you can inside a CS in order to stay competitive. I do roughly 2k more DPS on average compared to the other warrior in my guild simply because I've become familiar with the rotation at 85. The difference between an experienced warrior and a new guy is much more noticeable than it is now.

I'd say one of the hardest things to do at 85 when it comes to warrior is managing your rage and keeping up your rotation without succumbing to the tunnel vision. Cataclysm is very punishing when it comes to tunnel vision DPS. If you're the type of guy that spread defile or got hit by PP's gas bombs/malleable goo then you might find the raiding experience to be unenjoyable in cata. The skill required to be a good warrior in cataclysm is higher than it is in WOTLK. Of course, a lot of this has to do with the bias towards ranged in some of the raid content.

I'm trying to decide what class to play right now and I'd like some advice. I'd really like to play a warrior (right now I'm leveling a paladin). Their playstyle seems like it'd be much more fun & I'm more into the "blood & guts" rather than the whole "holy light" thing.

The problem is, I hear a lot of people talk about how much skill is required to play a warrior. I honestly don't have hours to practice playing a character everyday. I'd like to log in and have some fun and log out. So, I'm wondering: how much skill does warrior really take?

First of all, welcome. And word of advice, don't listen to Bigdownlow. All he does is whine.

Depending on what you're looking to do, warriors can be more complex than other classes (or less complex). As stated before, it all depends on what you wish to do.

For tanking, warriors are arguably the most complex. Arms and Fury aren't too difficult to figure out.

Warriors don't have a set rotation, per se, but rather a priority system - essentially every single warrior spec uses such a system. There isn't much of a learning curve, and most of it should come naturally as you level up and find which abilities work in what stances, etc.

Warriors have the steepest learning curve, are the most gear dependent and require a healer. Then you need a fast computer with the best internet connection for the lowest possible latency for spell reflect/stun jumping. You will need about 15 macros, key bindings, special mouse....just to be competitive. Then once you master it, they will nerf you again and other toons who have a warrior but roll another class will jump on the QQ threads and tell you to adapt. Rinse and repeat...with hundreds of hours just trying to be competive.

I have to disagree, with most of what you said. I have a real crapy computer to where even with all the setting at low I run at 3-6 fps and about 300-500 latency, when raiding and yet I can still MT every boss in the game with little to no issue at all. (I've done 10/12HM ICC on my DK as a Tank and Dps.) I'm even able to do a good amount of dps with my bad gear. Only time I get really screwed is pvpin on the Ise bg, so I just avoid that one.

And honestly I use one macro, and that is to whisper the person I gave Vig to. Now I do use Keybindings, but you don't need a special mouse. (Granted mine is a 5 button with a wheel that I picked up for less then $20.)